1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a video object clipping method of clipping video objects from a video image and a video object clipping apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a video object clipping technique for clipping a video object from a video image. The technique is utilized for creating a catalog or a poster by combining the clipped video object with another background image, or for creating contents of a Web page.
In addition, the video object clipping technique can be used for designating an anchor area for producing such image contents that provide related information if a user points a video object with the related information (name, a price).
As disclosed in a document “MPEG-4 standardized methods for the compression of arbitrarily shaped video objects” N. Brady (IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 9, no. 8, pp. 1170 1189, December 1999), MPEG-4 that is International Standard of video compression adopts an object encoding function for encoding data every object. The video object clipping technique for clipping a video object from a video image is used for the purpose of generating object data before encoding.
As a concrete example of the video object clipping technique there is “picture contour line extraction apparatuses” disclosed in Jpn. pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2001-14477. This is a method including inputting a contour by drawing a line using a pointing device such as a mouse, and modifying the contour. However, generally, a user must move a pointing device along unevenness of the video object to be clipped from the video image, when inputting a contour by a manual input. As a result, a time and labor are spent to input manually and accurately the contour of the object.
On the other hand, in a clip tool of a writing brush printing software made of Creo Co., Ltd., some templates are prepared beforehand, and a desired region is clipped by deforming the template (“Fude mame Ver. 11 (Treadmark)” guidebook, page 109-110). If this tool is used, the template can be used for clipping an object when the shape of the object is similar to the template.
However, in a method of clipping a video object by deforming a reference alpha image, there is a problem that a user must adjust a deformation parameter by times corresponding to the number of the original images to clip the video object from a plurality of original images.